Argentinian tango takes center stage at Toronto’s Panasonic Theatre in Arrabal

Buenos Aires. From the shantytowns in 1979 to the underground tango clubs 18 years later. Following the life of an innocent teenage girl getting lured into the scintillating world of tango in the face of a cultural revolution. Wait, you had me at the tango club. When I first learned of Mirvish‘s latest dance-oriented production, Arrabal, playing at the Panasonic Theatre, images of the Tango Roxanne from Moulin Rouge swam through my head. Yes, sign me up.

Arrabal is a story told entirely through dance, namely the tango, and does so in fun and exciting ways that I normally didn’t attribute the tango to do. Being as that there isn’t any dialogue between performers, the plot is fairly easy to follow — it’s not abstract or arcane, but the choreography speaks volumes.

Continue reading Review: Arrabal (Mirvish) →

Intricate puppets come to life in Ronnie Burkett’s The Daisy Theatre at Toronto’s Factory Theatre

I am going to review the show I saw, which was brilliant and delicious, but the show you see (when you wisely go and get tickets for this right away) will be different. The Daisy Theatre, which began as a commissioned work for the 2013 Luminato festival, is different every night at Factory Theatre. Ronnie Burkett and his cast of thirty-odd marionettes take the stage every evening in a cabaret-style show that changes according to whim and weather. Some numbers the audience gets to choose, some require the participation of audience members (many of them handsome young men, which I feel certain was a coincidence); politics, gossip, reviews and complaints all get mixed in. I left wanting to come back, to see it again, to see what changes, what other puppets and stories might take the stage.

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Boldly going where no improv has gone before, Final Frontier is playing at Toronto’s Comedy Bar

You don’t have to be intimately familiar with the Star Trek universe (and all of those spin-offs and reboots) to appreciate Bad Dog Theatre Company’s spoof of the franchise. Final Frontier, playing at the Comedy Bar as part of Bad Dog’s Epic Wednesday series, is funny on its own terms, but there is an added layer of hilarity for those who have spent countless hours dreaming of Starfleet Academy.

Epic Wednesdays consist of a monthly rotation of four improvised comedy shows that spoof such nerdy pursuits as role-playing and video games. Final Frontier opened last night to an enthusiastic crowd. From the staged recreation of Star Trek’s opening credit sequence to the ridiculous finale, the performers never missed a beat.  Continue reading Review: Final Frontier (Bad Dog Theatre Company) →

Music, movement and song celebrate the feminine in UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW at Toronto’s Worldstage

When the house lights dimmed at UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW (playing at WorldStage) and I first saw a fat, black, naked woman walking calmly through the audience, it deeply affected me, even though I had seen promotional material, including pictures, and knew what to expect. I’m probably not active enough to call myself a “fat activist”, but let’s call me a fat activism enthusiast, and I’m definitely a nakedness enthusiast. I have seen and loved many a fat naked body before. But this was different than in a private residence, or at Hanlon’s. This was theatre. And theatre is a celebration.

Theatre, to some extent, always deifies the representations onstage, in that we have to watch them, we are compelled, we have no choice.  So to see naked bodies, some of them fat, some of them racialized and one of them genderqueer, owning a stage before a rapt audience was like a religious experience for me. It was like there was finally a form of public worship I could believe in. Continue reading Review: UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW (Worldstage) →

Perfect for Family Day, n00b is a story of teen addiction to video games, at Toronto’s Young People’s Theatre

In today’s digital world, the analogue universe of theatre seems anachronistic. All too often playwrights seem to avoid technology as a theme, choosing to let the multi-million dollar world of film and television explore such concepts. Those that do choose to embrace technology on the stage often come across as latecomers, cashing in on trends that have long since passed, making their stories quaint at best or obsolete at worst. Going into Vertigo Theatre‘s production of n00b at Young People’s Theatre I found myself considering these obstacles, alongside the concern anyone pushing 30 might have of going into a production advertised “For ages 9 and up”.

It is truly a delight to say that my worries were almost completely unfounded. Calgary-based Vertigo Theatre has clearly recognized that Christopher Duthie’s script  is about far more than simply “pwning n00bs”. The story of a teenager running away from home after his parents dismantle his gaming console when it takes over his life is rife with explorations of themes like the importance of belonging, the need for recognition from one’s peers and the constant struggle for balance and identity in a world that is still trying to find its own in the second decade of the 21st Century.

Continue reading Review: n00b (Young People’s Theatre) →